A Shopify migration doesn’t end on launch day. Launch is when real traffic and real orders start, and issues begin to surface. I always catch the biggest problems in the first 30 days, which don’t crash the site but still cost you money. The biggest issues I have dealt with during Shopify migration are broken redirects, missing tracking, tax quirks, or checkout issues that only show up on certain devices.
This Shopify migration checklist is a post-launch QA plan you can run without overthinking it. It’s written for US-based teams because that’s where the majority of my experience is, but the flow is useful anywhere. Treat it as the step between launch and a stable store.
What does post-launch QA mean?
In the Shopify migration checklist, I look for three Post-launch QA checks three things:
- Customers can buy without issues
- Search engines can crawl and understand the new site
- Your analytics data is accurate.
I always make sure the essentials are correct and stay correct as Shopify apps, theme edits, and ongoing merchandising changes roll in.
I have covered the planning side of the migration in ecommerce migration checklist.
✅ Days 1–3: Test checkout and orders
Right after launch, I always do Shopify checkout testing by placing a real order on the devices customers use most, starting with mobile and then desktop. I check that the order confirmation email arrives, inventory decreases correctly, fulfillment settings route properly, and any post-purchase upsell or subscription flow behaves correctly.
I also check the settings that often cause problems in the first week: shipping rates, tax settings, and payment methods. A working checkout can still cause problems if a popular shipping zone is missing or taxes are misapplied for a key state.
You’ll also want to verify that critical pages render and function with real data. Test a product with variants, a product on sale, a product that’s out of stock, and a discounted cart. The goal is to quickly catch a theme edge case before your customers do.
✅ Days 4–7: Redirects and crawlability
Most migration SEO problems come from redirects that are incomplete, inconsistent, or pointed to the wrong place. Start by validating your highest-value URLs first: top collections, top products, blog posts that bring organic traffic, and any pages with strong backlink profiles.
Start by importing your redirect list in the admin using Shopify URL redirects, especially when you’re moving a lot of legacy URLs. If the structure changed, treat it like a site move with URL changes and spend the first two weeks validating redirect accuracy, canonical tags, and crawl coverage.
Here’s what I watch in the first week: old URLs should resolve to the right new URLs (not the homepage unless there’s truly no equivalent), important pages should return 200, and you shouldn’t see chains (A → B → C) or loops. Also check that canonical tags point to the right final URLs, and that indexing signals aren’t accidentally blocked.
A practical move here is to export a list of your top landing pages from analytics (or Search Console) and do a quick spot check: does each old URL land on the most relevant new page, and does the new page match intent?
✅ Days 8–14: Analytics and pixels checks
Teams often assume everything is working, then later find missing revenue, duplicate purchases, or key events that fail on mobile during Shopify tracking setup after migration.
Post-launch QA is part of operations, not a one-time task. If you’re running an ecommerce store, tracking checks work best as a routine, especially when channel mix and tags change week to week.
Compare three numbers that should roughly line up:
- Shopify net sales
- Your payment processor deposits
- Analytics purchase revenue.
They won’t match perfectly because of timing, refunds, and taxes, but major gaps are a red flag.
Next, validate the basics in the storefront: page views, add-to-cart, begin checkout, purchase, and any subscription or post-purchase events you rely on. If you use multiple channels (Meta, Google Ads, TikTok), make sure their pixels are firing once per event, not multiple times due to theme scripts or tag manager duplication.
This is also the point where you want to verify that marketing emails and abandoned checkout flows still work. Migration can quietly break email templates, transactional notifications, or app-to-app webhooks.
✅ Days 15–21: Content and merchandising
Once checkout and redirects look stable, the next problems are usually content and merchandising issues that reduce conversion without creating obvious errors. Review your top collections and best-selling products. Confirm the page experience is still as good as before.
Check product pages for missing content. Review titles, descriptions, images, variant labels, size charts, and tabs. Confirm that structured product information (like materials, sizing, compatibility, or care instructions) still displays correctly if it previously relied on custom fields or app rendering.
Also, verify that internal navigation still supports how people shop. Menus, filters, collection sorting, and search behavior are conversion levers. If any of these changed during the migration, you’ll see a lot of traffic but low conversions.
During a Shopify migration, the parts that most often change are theme behavior, app dependencies, and how product data renders across templates.
✅ Days 22–30: Speed and ongoing monitoring
By the last third of the month, I shift my process to how to keep the site healthy. Site speed is a big part of that, because migrations often add apps, tracking scripts, and heavier themes. The cost shows up gradually: slower mobile load, lower conversion, higher bounce.
Look at your core templates (home, collection, product, cart, checkout entry). If performance has gone down, isolate what changed: new apps, heavier images, third-party scripts, or a theme feature that loads on every page. I find removing or deferring a script that’s not working is the best way to increase speed.
This is where it helps to have a simple, recurring checklist you run monthly. I have written a straightforward explainer on page speed for SEO that fits well when you’re prioritizing fixes.
Finally, do one more pass on error monitoring and operational readiness. Make sure your support team knows shipping timelines, order notifications, and refund flow, and that your internal team has a short list of the metrics that indicate real problems (conversion rate shifts, checkout drop-off changes, sudden traffic loss to key landing pages).
Final thoughts: Protect revenue in the first 30 days
The first 30 days after a migration are when you earn the benefits of moving to Shopify. If you treat post-launch QA as a repeatable routine, you catch the issues that don’t look that big but compound over time: misrouted redirects, broken tracking, slower pages, and small checkout friction that turns into big lost revenue.
Use this Shopify migration checklist as your baseline, then refine it to match your store’s reality. When you make a 30-day post-launch QA part of how you operate, you’re protecting revenue while the store keeps evolving.
FAQs
1. What is the Magento to Shopify Migration Checklist?
A Magento to Shopify migration checklist includes migrating products, customers, orders, collections, redirects, and apps. After launch, I check variant data, customer accounts, payment settings, and shipping rules, because Magento stores have more complex catalog and backend setups.
2. What is the checklist for the Wix to Shopify migration?
A Wix to Shopify migration checklist covers transferring products, pages, blog content, images, domain settings, and design elements. Since Wix and Shopify work very differently, you should also review navigation, mobile layout, contact forms, and SEO settings.
3. What is the Shopify migration SEO checklist?
A Shopify migration SEO checklist includes preserving important URLs where possible, setting up 301 redirects, updating meta titles and descriptions, checking canonical tags, submitting the new sitemap, and monitoring crawl errors in Google Search Console.
4. What is the checklist for the WooCommerce to Shopify migration?
A WooCommerce to Shopify migration checklist includes moving products, categories, customers, orders, coupons, blog posts, and key plugins or features into the Shopify app alternatives. After migration, it is important to test product pages, checkout flow, tax settings, shipping methods, and redirects because WooCommerce stores often rely heavily on plugins that do not directly carry over to Shopify.
About the author
Vineet Nair
Vineet is an experienced content strategist with expertise in the ecommerce domain and a keen interest in Shopify. He aims to help Shopify merchants thrive in this competitive environment with technical solutions and thoughtfully structured content.